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The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.

When you worked in a studio it was the studio system that you kind of missed because it was a big, big family. I mean MGM had 5,000 people working a day there. You miss it.

I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of life that was possible. Yeah, it made it kind of harder because the standards were higher, but there was no pressure.

Studios were just run differently. There really was a head of a studio. There were people who loved their studios. Who worked for their studios and were loaned out to other people and everybody sort of got a piece. Well now there's a handful now.

It was progressively more difficult to find work in the theatre, as well.

For the longest time I was afraid I'd have to keep on working at the factories. There was a steel mill and a pottery; if you didn't go to college, you went to work in those places.

I think it's probably the Dutch who are to blame for starting the whole 'art business', because before they came along, art was attached to relatively stable structures, and it was everybody's. It was like going to the movies.

I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.

The most wonderful time to be in the art world was in the sixties, because it wasn't a business - there was no business of doing art.

Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.